There Be Ghosts
by Mongoosey
Summary: Short, sympathetic, apathetic pieces on some characters. A new approach at the stranger aspects of growing up.


**Chapter 1: Silvers**

**I**t can't be that easy, Draco thinks. It can't be.

The train is six hours long

And all he had to drink was some pumpkin juice.

And whiskey.

Maybe it's the whiskey

Blame it on the whiskey

For making him think this way.

It's freezing

inside the compartment.

Draco shivers

Yet

He knows

From experience

The weather doesn't change

For him. Not even with magic.

So there he sits

Quiet and alone.

He can't see

Anything

but

dust and dirt and dandruff

Swimming in

slivers of water

We call

sunlight.

It can't be that easy, he repeats.

To himself.

It's never that easy.

The window

He's peering through

Glistens

With frost

And burns

The same.

Even if it was easy…

His lips and chin

Slice

Alabaster

in the glass.

I don't think I can do it.

Jazz music plays, and he pours himself another glass.

The drink almost spills on him.

**Chapter 2: Thou May Not**

**P**lease, Harry. Play.

The score is sixteen-zero.

Slytherin is leading, scoring triumphantly amidst the otherwise dismal weather.

The weather is an icebox wonderland, complete with drooping icicles and lazy snow shards. Winter heat, and they shrug it off.

The cold peppers their skin, all the way to their green and white and red and yellow Quidditch socks.

There are shivers, and there are cares and fears, and they are shrugged off also. And land unto the marble ocean below.

Harry isn't playing.

If otherwise…

Ron's goggles are beat, worn-down, shit. Harry wonders why his best friend can't deserve more, and Ron wonders the same.

They look at each other, just look.

They don't even see each other, the way you have to when you want to be aware of another person and understand where they stand.

There is no sight for Harry to see Ron. Or Ron to see Harry.

There is no standing in mid-air.

There are diamonds.

I will, whispers Harry from all the way across the pitch. I am.

Everyone sees it.

Ron doesn't need to.

Explosion.

Waving that gold snitch in the path of snowflakes, Ron's breath is the first he hears.

And there he is, over there.

He's smiling, and his cheeks are bunched up like dimpled cookie hearts under his second-hand goggles.

There are days like these, and you sort of understand what it is to sort of like yourself. Even if it's just a little bit.

**Chapter 3: B Flats and A Minors**

**S**he's grown up, and she knows it.

The faint dwindling rays of the sun embrace the quiet of the dorm room. It woos every single object, silently strangling the shadows out of them, an effort of the waning light. Fingerprints smudge winter's breath on the glass, yet it's view is cold comfort to her almost sincere destruction.

There are no mirrors, but she can see herself just fine.

For she prides herself on her wrists, although wiry and small. They are slender, and she knows in her heart that all those classic actresses that she has pinned up on her walls, all have those skinny wrists.

It is my beauty spot, she thinks. Mine unto mine own.

Mine own. Her Mine Own. Her Mi Own Ne.

Yes, mine own.

She's never wished to be like Lavender, Parvati, or those other girls in Hufflepuff. It never particularly interested her, with all the fun and love she's entitled to, around Harry and Ron.

But there are some times, some thoughts. Some thoughts that hit her when wandering halls at two-thirty a.m., eating her lunch in the middle of spring, studying in the afternoon on the Scottish hillside. It's those that threaten her.

This is what happens when you lose yourself after all these years.

She's grown up, and it changes. Gradually, like how caves are made.

You end up wishing you still were who you used to be.

The person she is now. She glides instead of walks. She sings instead of talk. She glances instead of gawks. Doughy mounds of flesh rise and swell with every beating of her heart. She's now to shave hair where it has never grown before. Her brows must be plucked, her nails filed and painted, acne nonexistent, legs and arms slathered in lotion, and make-up applied.

Women, the fairer sex. Women, the original temptation. Women, the eternal enigma. Women.

She knows that everything she now has will not keep her satisfied. She knows. Maybe too much.

Being grown up is an odyssey unto itself.

And she looks away.

She can't bear to see herself.

In that little room, with shadows among potted plants and actresses staring from the walls, Hermione Granger never once put mirrors in.

**Chapter 4: Odds Are**

**T**oday is his birthday.

He visualizes those boy-colored balloons, all red and green and blue. The white letters say, "It's Your Special Day" and he screams as streamers slither down, as confetti is thrown and quickly substitutes for air, and everyone is singing "Happy Birthday" in a sunlit living room.

There are tiers and tiers upon tiers of chocolate frosting and baby raspberries; one of those expensive cakes that he swears winks at him, for sale at some ritzy French bakery. But today they won't look down at his work trousers and dirty fingernails. Today they won't whisper in slanted voices and stare as if snakes lurked in their eyes. Today they won't throw pieces of glass from the broken warehouse he lives next to and shout, "Poor! Poor boy's mama's a whore!" over and over again until he cries.

It's his birthday, and everyone's here, and he's happy.

He's going to ignore the white washed walls, the quiet onslaught of night, the missing greetings, and lack of tables. He's going to ignore the sandwich on his napkin with mustard spelling out "I Love You" and the thermos of hot chocolate near his sleeping mat. He chooses to ignore the one candle in which he reads all of his inscriptions on those white washed walls. He's going to ignore the scratching, scratching of the rats living in his walls, and the shadows his one tiny candle creates.

He refuses to hear the screaming.

He lies still, clutching a torn teddy bear in one arm, and he doesn't want to hear anymore.

He doesn't want to hear his mom, who pads in, her bare feet slightly splintered from running so much in that damn house. He doesn't want to hear her smile, a broken, steady smile, through that liquid poison seeping down her face. He doesn't want to hear the ruffling of her fingers as she weaves it against his hair, he doesn't want to hear the almost strangled "I love you, baby" that she whispers, and he knows she strains her voice to tell him that because his dad also doesn't like hearing her.

"Happy Birthday, darlin'. Happy Birthday, my little Tom."

He can't stand hearing love, because this is what love is.

Love is his mother standing in the doorway of his room clad in a patched apron. Love is his father regretting married life, and beats those regrets into his mother. Love is his father cradling his mother, clad in a bloody apron, humming chandeliers to keep from screaming or crying or both.

Love is his mother murmuring through corrosive tears and carefully through the scars around her mouth where her teeth bit into that soft flesh. Murmuring. Singing. Humming. Running.

He can't stand hearing love.

Mrs. Riddle wants so desperately to see the outline of her son, but she can't. It's too blurry.

Too blurry.

**Chapter 5: The Empire State Building**

**H**urry, he hissed. Faster. Faster.

Now we're hiding from behind an enormous rock, jagged and crusted with lava holes.

I can feel his leg hair brush past the sole of my foot, and whack him with the sandy palm of my hand to shut him up.

The sand beneath, and my knees are sinking to a point. Sunk halfway through the earth, and the sand crabs are tickling my bones.

Shit, I breathe, hot and quivering, Let's end this. Let's go. It's a bad idea.

It's stupid, I think. It's juvenile. Two grown kids waiting to frighten the shit out of someone. It's stupid.

My eyes narrow as I see her goddamn manicured feet and citrus-colored slippers pause for a moment, then wander off to the car. Fucking Mudbloods. Even if it was stupid, at least I would be sinking for something.

He turns toward me, and gives me a fucking grin.

Well, he says, all smug and what-not. That was a bloody waste of our time.

I wanted to say that jumping out from behind rocks and scaring people are always bloody wastes of time, but the heat was starting to get unbearable.

The most beautiful day, and I can't shake off the annoyance in me. He is smug now, he is strong, he is cocky, he is brave, he is breaking, he is not perfect, he is beautiful, he is holding my arm.

I am sinking, and he is holding me up.

Suddenly it doesn't matter that we are stuck on this "vacation" together, it doesn't matter that we can't stand each other's guts, it doesn't matter about a lot of things.

He's holding me up, and his eyes brand my skin like that stupid scar of his.

Twice I've fallen. Twice I've picked myself up.

I don't need the bloody Boy-Who-Lived.

I can drop myself down fine.

**Chapter 6: Authored**

**H**ello Draco. Hello again.

It seems like forever when we've last talked, roughly three minutes and twenty-six seconds ago.

It seems like forever, you know. But that too was taken away.

I know this may not move you.

I know with all my heart.

I know that my heart means nothing.

If it did, I would have missed it

When it shattered.

You are beautiful, they said. You are beautiful.

It took me a while to realize that who they meant was me, not you.

I am ugly, I repeated. I am ugly.

Your eyes said, I know. Your eyes said, I don't understand.

I wanted this love.

So different from Ron's and Hermione's.

Because you smiled a broken smile and I smiled back because I was broken too.

But you know I love Ron.

You know I love Hermione.

Because they were always there when you refused to be. Because they didn't want me to be broken, and you liked me fine like that. Because when I cried and vomited, Ron held the trash can. Because when my quill fell apart, Hermione taught me a spell to mend it again. Because when a bug landed in my porridge, Ron picked it out of my food. Because when I fractured my arm in three places, Hermione came to the infirmary and watched me sleep.

Sometimes, I wonder why I even tried loving you when my heart was already so full.

Maybe I just decided to make room for more.

I think our hello turned out wrong.

I hope you loved me at goodbye.

**Chapter 8: Seven Was Too Lucky**

**S**houlders square and hair in the sunlight and it's a bright school day.

It was easy. It was easy.

I did it. I did it.

Blame the whiskey.

Blame the whiskey, for it was not I.

For it was not I.

Not I.

Not I.


End file.
